


The Bright and Darkened Lands

by paperwar



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: In which Taki reads Auden -- "we must love one another or die" -- as she and Natsume try to cope with the weight of the world.
Loosely linked to Trouble Shared, but readable as a standalone.





	

"He was a poet from England," Tooru says, smoothing down the page of the yellowed book in her lap, marking her spot with a finger as she turns her face up to Takashi, standing at the end of the couch. He's just home from work, his cheeks still red from the wind that's been howling all day.

"Oh." His mouth moves for a second before he says, "I didn't know you read poetry."

She makes a sound almost like a laugh, more like the echo of a laugh: a little sadder, a little more afraid. As if the coldest youkai, furthest from human connection or understanding, tried to imitate the sound: hollow.

"I don't," she says, shaking her head. "Not that much. Not compared to" -- she waves to indicate the crowded shelves around her, the books that Takashi's seen her dive into a thousand times: myths, spells, spirits, all the things that shouldn't exist but that make up their daily lives. She's spent all day digging through them, in fact, looking for anything on a new youkai they'd seen around the area: whisper-thin, and humanoid, and with a predilection for snooping around kitchens. "Once in a while. Sometimes poems," and now her hand flutters, unsure, helpless, "Oh, sometimes, you know, they seem to say things I can't. Important things." She can feel her face heating up.

He's not laughing. Not that she thought he would, not really, not ever. Instead he asks, "What kind of things?"

She twists her lips. "Here." She smooths down the page and holds the book up. "He wrote this in 1939, when war was starting." She clears her throat, tilts her face up to check he's really not laughing (though she knows he isn't; Takashi's kindness precludes laughing at other people, except maybe Nyanko-sensei, and that she can fully understand). She reads a line: "We must love one another or die."

She looks up in time to catch Takashi shivering. "I know. Me too," she tells him. Her lips twist again. "Sometimes, when it seems like the world is ending, I guess that's all we can do, right? Love each other?"

He hesitates, his shoulders twitching in a shrug. "I don't know anything about poetry, but I think I know what he means." She smiles, pulls him down to sit next to her on the couch, and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back and says, "It makes me think that we have to keep remembering what we're doing. Why we're doing... this." He gestures with his free hand: to the books, to their house, a wider circle that she understands to mean Yatsuhara, their town, their friends. Youkai everywhere, maybe. His voice is firmer as he finishes, "We can't be like Matoba."

She drops his hand so she can drape his arm across her shoulders and curl into him. "You know, it's funny," and she can hear her own voice trembling, "I read that he changed his poem later, so it said: 'We must love one another _and_ die.'" She lifts her head to study his face, wanting to see if he feels the same way she does about it.

He nods, face somber. "I think that's also true."

She always took that line, that grimmer version, to mean that people had to love, _had_ to, because it would burst out of them no matter what, because that's what being human meant -- though she's seen youkai she would swear were also destined to love -- and they would die anyway, because everyone died.

But Matoba made her feel like they might die for the very reason that they were trying to love. That maybe love made them weak. That they couldn't do anything but love, because that was the right thing to do, that was what was inside them, their truest instinct. But that it might cost them, in the end: it might cost them everything.

"I'm just being dramatic," she sighs, embarrassed to feel the sting of tears, giving the page one more nervous pat before closing the book.

"We'll figure out something," he tells her. "We have to. We will." There's a moment of serenity there, like he really believes what he says. She tries to let herself trust it.

**Author's Note:**

> I drafted this some time after the Brexit referendum, but it seemed appropriate since yesterday to go ahead and finish it. Also, I'm terribly behind on canon, but I think Matoba, or people like him, sadly exist no matter what...
> 
> The poem is W. H. Auden's ["September 1, 1939"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/september-1-1939). 
> 
> Thanks to Emily for telling me it was within reason that Taki might've encountered Auden in school, or in her grandfather's library, or elsewhere.


End file.
